Dr Pleas­ant shows his power; Pren­tiss is nearly brought down by a garden implement.

Played

13^th Janu­ary 2011.

Dramatis Personae

• Lady Ant­o­nia deVore – a Heav­ily-armed Aris­to­crat *.
• Cap­tain Ben­son Cur­ruth­ers – a Mil­it­ary Police­man.
• Doc­tor Zephaniah Pleas­ant – a Sin­is­ter Sur­geon.
• Miss April Sharpe – a Self-taught Invent­or.
• Jack Pren­tiss – a Dodgy Ped­es­tri­an.
• Rod­ney Marsh – a Par­tially-reformed Thief *.
• Lewis – an Unsuc­cess­ful Burg­lar.
• the Corpse of Mar­tin Geffey.
• a Young Con­stable.
• two Ath­let­ic Bob­bies.

Plot

Pren­tiss was run­ning as soon as his feet hit the path, chas­ing after the burg­lar he had seen drop­ping past the study win­dow. Unfor­tu­nately, it was dark in the yard and an unseen rake nearly knocked him out. The thief took the oppor­tun­ity to try and climb over the back wall, but his ini­tial leap fell short, squan­der­ing his advantage.

Cur­ruth­ers, hav­ing ascer­tained that the thief was being chased, headed for the front door, intend­ing to cut the vil­lain off at the end of the alley. Dr Pleas­ant and Miss Sharpe fol­lowed, leav­ing Lady Ant­o­nia to keep an eye on the study. That they might not pick the right end of the alley did not occur to them.

Hit­ting the ground on the far side of the wall, Pren­tiss dog­gedly renewed his pur­suit, catch­ing the burg­lar in a bear hug after he skid­ded in a puddle. Cur­ruth­ers and his team appeared at the nearest end of the alley, hav­ing made the right decision, just as the thief broke loose, sprint­ing in the oth­er dir­ec­tion. Pleas­ant reacted imme­di­ately, call­ing on Mal­phas, the Tower Build­er, to inter­vene: a burst of blue light and an accom­pa­ny­ing thun­der­clap nearly stunned the vil­lain, but he shook it off and ran on. Cur­ruth­ers calmly put a bul­let in his shoulder, slow­ing him down enough for Pren­tiss to catch him again.

The team assembled and examined their cap­tive: a shabby look­ing little man with oddly rodent-like fea­tures. They found them­selves reminded of Marsh, although this was def­in­itely not him. Attempt­ing to get some inform­a­tion out of him, Cur­ruth­ers attemp­ted to per­suade them that things would go bet­ter if he talked. All the while, Pren­tiss loomed over them in an intim­id­at­ing man­ner, although this was com­prom­ised some­what as Dr Pleas­ant atten­ded to his devel­op­ing black eye, mut­ter­ing about tasks that were “beneath him”. Even­tu­ally, offered a deal, the crim­in­al, Lewis, admit­ted to being hired by a mys­ter­i­ous fig­ure. He had broken into the house to steal sev­er­al spe­cif­ic objects and had been per­mit­ted to take any­thing else he wanted in order to muddy the picture.

He pro­duced a bag from under his coat and revealed a num­ber of odd objects: two sets of elab­or­ate black robes, an elab­or­ate chain of office (although not for any recog­nis­able organ­isa­tion), a private journ­al. He also had jew­ellery and oth­er items of value. He was sup­posed to loc­ate a small sil­ver key, but had been unable to find it.

Extract­ing the loc­a­tion of the pub where Lewis had met his pat­ron and where he was due to hand over the loot, the team headed back towards the West End. As they passed the Cathed­ral, they were accos­ted by a con­stable, who informed them that they’d found the body of Mar­tin Gef­fey. Pleas­ant and April went with him while the oth­ers took Lewis on to the Min­istry. The body lay in an alley near St Paul’s, at the end of an increas­ingly wild set of tracks, as though he had stumbled the final steps. Like the good Dean, it bore an expres­sion of ter­ror. Pleas­ant rap­idly came to the con­clu­sion he had died of a seizure, prob­ably brought on by fear. Miss Sharpe used her Detecter­onatron, to hunt for spir­its, but was unsuccessful.

As the pair returned to the Min­istry, they caught a glimpse of Marsh. As they attemp­ted to hail him, they heard whistles and the pound­ing of heavy boots. Look­ing wildly around him, Marsh fled into the fog!

Notes

This was the first time I had attemp­ted to use the chase sys­tem, widely touted as one of Sav­age Worlds’ more use­ful fea­tures. It was a little con­fus­ing at first, as the whole thing is writ­ten in terms of car chases, even though it was expli­citly for foot chases as well. I found myself hav­ing to decide exactly what “Ser­i­ously Out of Con­trol” meant for a ped­es­tri­an (stum­bling) and exactly how climb­ing a wall might affect pro­ceed­ings. I’m still not sure the sys­tem reflec­ted Pren­tiss’ super­i­or pace well enough or the effect of attack­ing while run­ning, but it’s anoth­er sys­tem that will bene­fit from prac­tice. Next time, there will def­in­itely be more obstacles!

Had Marsh been present, he would have recog­nised Lewis as a former asso­ci­ate and prob­ably have got­ten more inform­a­tion out of him. As it was, it was largely irrelevant.

(* – play­er not present.)